Flourishing
Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World
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Narrated by:
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Tom Perkins
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By:
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Miroslav Volf
About this listen
More than almost anything else, globalization and the great world religions are shaping our lives, affecting everything from the public policies of political leaders and the economic decisions of industry bosses and employees to university curricula, all the way to the inner longings of our hearts. Integral to both globalization and religions are compelling, overlapping, and sometimes competing visions of what it means to live well.
In this perceptive, deeply personal, and beautifully written book, a leading theologian sheds light on how religions and globalization have historically interacted and argues for what their relationship ought to be. Recounting how these twinned forces have intersected in his own life, he shows how world religions, despite their malfunctions, remain one of our most potent sources of moral motivation and contain within them profoundly evocative accounts of human flourishing. Globalization should be judged by how well it serves us for living out our authentic humanity as envisioned within these traditions. Through renewal and reform, religions might, in turn, shape globalization so that it can be about more than bread alone.
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In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people”, who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.
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Robotic narrator
- By Shahin on 09-19-18
By: Francis Fukuyama
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The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
- By: Mark A. Noll
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Although Christian believers agreed with one another that the Bible was authoritative and that it should be interpreted through commonsense principles, there was rampant disagreement about what Scripture taught about slavery. Furthermore, most Americans continued to believe that God ruled over the affairs of people and nations, but they were radically divided in their interpretations of what God was doing in and through the war.
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Nice addition to History of U.S. Religious Culture
- By Lisa Larges on 06-04-12
By: Mark A. Noll
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Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
- Thinkers of the New Left
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Rory Barnett
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the leading critics of leftist orientations comes a study of the thinkers who have most influenced the attitudes of the New Left. Beginning with a ruthless analysis of New Leftism and concluding with a critique of the key strands in its thinking, Roger Scruton conducts a reappraisal of such major left-wing thinkers as E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, R. D. Laing, Jurgen Habermas, Gyorgy Lukacs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Slavoj Žižek, Ralph Milliband, and Eric Hobsbawm. Scruton delivers a critique of modern left-wing thinking.
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Deconstructing the New Left
- By Wayne on 01-17-20
By: Roger Scruton
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What Are We Doing Here?
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
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Unpersuasive and a bit repetitive
- By Adam Shields on 03-07-18
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Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
- By: Samuel Gregg
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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This sharp commentary on the rise and current decline of Western Civilization touches on historical moments - including the building of early universities in the Middle Ages and the American Revolution - and figures - including Augustine, Acquinas, Edmund Burke, and Adam Smith - that exemplify the faith-reason synthesis at the heart of Western Civilization, as well as the modern villains that threaten to destroy it.
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Excellent description of the current state of the West
- By Terryn on 10-24-19
By: Samuel Gregg
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Suicide of the West
- How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Jonah Goldberg
- Length: 16 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Only once in the last 250,000 years have humans stumbled upon a way to lift ourselves out of the endless cycle of poverty, hunger, and war that defines most of history. If democracy, individualism, and the free market were humankind’s destiny, they should have appeared and taken hold a bit earlier in the evolutionary record. The emergence of freedom and prosperity was nothing short of a miracle.
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Put some gratitude in your attitude
- By Amazon Customer on 04-25-18
By: Jonah Goldberg
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Knowing Christ Today
- Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge
- By: Dallas Willard
- Narrated by: David Cochran Heath
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when popular atheism books are talking about the irrationality of believing in God, Willard makes a rigorous intellectual case for why it makes sense to believe in God and in Jesus, the Son.
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Logical to a fault
- By cynthia on 05-13-10
By: Dallas Willard
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The Reason for God
- Belief in an Age of Skepticism
- By: Timothy Keller
- Narrated by: Timothy Keller
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Abridged
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The End of Faith. The God Delusion. God Is Not Great. Letter to a Christian Nation. Best seller lists are filled with doubters. But what happens when you actually doubt your doubts? Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics, and even ardent believers, have about religion.
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Unrivaled Apologetics
- By Daniel on 05-01-13
By: Timothy Keller
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A Time to Build
- From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Ford Enlow
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription.
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Incisive and Illuminating
- By Jakob on 01-26-23
By: Yuval Levin
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The End of History and the Last Man
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.
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An important discussion expertly narrated
- By Kevin Teeple on 06-27-19
By: Francis Fukuyama
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The God Argument
- The Case Against Religion and for Humanism
- By: A. C. Grayling
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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What are the arguments for and against religion and religious belief - all of them - right across the range of reasons and motives that people have for being religious, and do they stand up to scrutiny? Can there be a clear, full statement of these arguments that once and for all will show what is at stake in this debate? Equally important: what is the alternative to religion as a view of the world and a foundation for morality?
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Fascinating Topic Made Mind Numbingly Dull
- By m.emery on 06-17-15
By: A. C. Grayling
What listeners say about Flourishing
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- Kris Samons
- 07-08-24
Outstanding
This book is worth reading and rereading. I love Volf’s vision and call for all the major world religions to work together for a globalized common good for every human and every culture.
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- Adam Shields
- 05-26-16
Globalization requires attention to religion.
Volf has a strange religious background. He grew up in officially godless communism, but his parents were Pentecostals. His country of origin was dominated by a mix of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox Christians and Muslims. He earned two PhDs under the German Lutheran theologian Jurgen Moltmann. He came to the US and taught at the evangelical Fuller Seminary before moving to Yale, and now identifies as Anglican. But Flourishing largely comes out of several years of jointly teaching a class on globalization and faith with Tony Blair (who converted to Roman Catholicism after leaving office as the Prime Minister of the UK).
Flourishing is both fascinating and feels like I have read the book before. Madeleine Albright’s The Mighty and the Almighty makes a case for why international affairs needs to pay more attention to religion, as does several of Jimmy Carter’s books and John Danforth’s Faith and Politics. And while not focused on international politics, Stephen Prothero in Religious Literacy and God is not One stresses the importance of understanding religions to understanding the world around us.
Volf, while not directly drawing on the Economics of Good and Evil, does a good job teasing out the limits of our current economic and political system around morality and justice. The concepts around the need for pluralism in a globalized world felt very well trod from everyone from Thomas Friedman’s World is Flat to James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World and many others.
Despite previously covered ground, I do think Flourishing is a book worth reading. Miroslov Volf is calling on religious groups to step up and act right in a pluralistic world because the world needs the input of religious voices. Right now democracy and capitalism have won the day, but neither, without the influence of religious voices, can inherently move us to a more moral world. Democracy is limited to the morality of the voters and elected officials. Immoral officials and/or ignorant, cynical or prejudiced voters will trample the rights of the minority. As Volf rightly notes, the problem in the middle east is not just violent dictatorships, but constitutional democracies that are making choices that are not pluralistic.
Volf is particularly talking to other Christians in this book. He is trying to make the case that we should embrace political pluralism. But he distinguishes political pluralism from religious pluralism. This is one of the areas where I think Flourishing is unique. He has a grid of religious pluralism and religious exclusivism and political pluralism and political exclusivism. Volf thinks the healthiest place is where political pluralism and religious exclusivism intersect. The political pluralist embraces the rights of everyone, is outward looking to the rest of the world, but also is strengthened by moral stamina that comes from religious exclusivism.
Interestingly, he specifically points out the religious right in the United States as an example of this model. Citing training from religious right groups like Focus on the Family, he shows that the moral underpinning of their religious exclusivism undergirds their political action, which is inherently pluralistic. In a diverse world, no one group can make a case for particular actions relying solely on their religious language, but they must also work on adapting their argument to a secular public or a public that has different religious values than their own.
Reconciliation, because it has such a big role in Volf’s work is also brought up in Flourishing (quite rightly.) Volf makes the case that while many wars and other conflicts are rooted in religious difference, religion as a whole has championed peace. And while it may not feel like it, we are living in one of the most peaceful periods of history, in large part because of the role of religions. Volf really does speak about the important role of reconciliation better than almost anyone I have read.
On the whole, part one felt mostly like old material. Part two mostly felt like it was fresh because even when using material from others it was in unique ways. The epilogue felt like a missed opportunity. I think introducing some of those concepts would have been helpful if introduced earlier (especially the personal stories). But also the epilogue introduced several areas that Volf will work on in the future.
One significant area that I wish has been addressed directly, is what to do with the religious anti-pluralists. Volf is not a fan of the fundamentalist elements in many religious groups that are anti-pluralist. But they are not insignificant groups and this is an area that I think that many pluralist advocates have not addressed. I asked the same question in grad school when theologian and political theorist Jean Bethke Elshain was a guest lecturer in one of my classes back in 1995 or so. Her answer was that we should just ignore those religious minorities that refuse to engage with the broader society. But I think that is partially how we create angry backlashes. There is a limit to how far people will be willing to feel alienated. At some point those religious minorities will either grow large enough or angry enough that the backlash is felt in the larger society. Volf and other theorists need to also need to think about how to engage the reluctant to avoid that backlash that potentially will destroy the pluralist democracies that Volf and Elshain and others are encouraging.
I listened to this on audiobook. The audiobook was well narrated but I would like to re-read it in print. I assumed that this might not be book that was best suited to audio going in, but the audiobook was a bit over half the price of the kindle book when it first came out. The kindle book has dropped in price a bit, but is still $14.99 right now. When it drops in price a bit (or my library gets a copy) I will pick it up again. I have Volf’s Allah and A Public Faith that I will read sometime in the near future.
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- John W
- 01-25-17
Takes some work on your part
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
Yes, it is a unique perspective, not confrontational and provides thorough background for his argument.
Who was your favorite character and why?
It's non-fiction, I guess I liked Roger Williams from the MA Bay Colony. He believed in religious freedom while maintaining personal faith.
Would you listen to another book narrated by Tom Perkins?
Sure
Did Flourishing inspire you to do anything?
I made two blog entries. Further inspiration to bridge the church/secular barrier.
Any additional comments?
Volf leaves a lot out of his stories and skips over history that his inconvenient to his argument. So I was unconvinced in the end. But that isn't entirely the point of the book. It was try to see things from someone else's POV.
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